Developing the Nature-based Tourism Sector in Southwestern North Dakota1

Rural communities around the country are increasingly looking to the tourism sector as a source of economic growth. With substantial growth in tourism over the past several decades, both in the United States and elsewhere in the industrialized world, tourism promotion has become an important economic development strategy (Dowling 2003, Honey 2002, Gibson 1993). In the United States, the growth of the travel and tourism industry outpaced Gross Domestic Product growth in all but 4 of the past 46 years (Wilkerson 2003). The notion that tourism and recreation can contribute to the economic base of rural areas gains further support when socioeconomic trends in rural recreation counties are examined (Johnson and Beale 2002, Reeder and Brown 2005). Since 1970, population growth of the 327 rural U.S. counties most economically dependant on recreation-tourism activities has been more than double the population growth in nonmetro counties overall (Johnson and Beale 2002). During the 1990s, population growth in these tourism-dependent economies averaged 20.2 percent, compared to 6.6 percent for counties that were economically dependent on farming and 2.3 percent for those dependent on mining. Similarly, Reeder and Brown (2005) examined socioeconomic trends during the 1990s for 311 rural recreation/tourism counties and found that tourism an